ArticleCellular microbiology2008
Leishmania chitinase facilitates colonization of sand fly vectors and enhances transmission to mice.
Article in Cellular microbiology, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 54 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
54 citing papers in PubMed, 97 citations in OpenAlex.
- Identification of a conserved gene family with an essential role inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Characterization of GH18 chitinase in Leishmania braziliensis: expression, structural insights, and implications for vaccine and therapeutic development.Biological research · 2026Article
- Identification of transporters essential for survival of Leishmania promastigotes in the digestive tract of sand flies.PLoS pathogens · 2026Article
- LeishTec vaccination disrupts vertical transmission of Leishmania infantum.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2025Article
- Single-cell atlas ofProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Ties that bind us: Leishmania grasps the sandfly.Trends in parasitology · 2024Article
- Discovery of essential kinetoplastid-insect adhesion proteins and their function in Leishmania-sand fly interactions.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Aspartyl protease in the secretome of honey bee trypanosomatid parasite contributes to infection of bees.Parasites & vectors · 2024Article
- Interactions between Leishmania parasite and sandfly: a review.Parasitology research · 2023Review
- A sticky situation: When trypanosomatids attach to insect tissues.PLoS pathogens · 2023Review
- Non-Vesicular Lipid Transport Machinery inInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2023Review
- Formation and three-dimensional architecture ofeLife · 2023Article
- Review
- Host-Parasite Interactions: Regulation of Leishmania Infection in Sand Fly.Acta parasitologica · 2022Review
- Sand flies: Basic information on the vectors of leishmaniasis and their interactions with Leishmania parasites.Communications biology · 2022Review
- Micro-CT visualization of a promastigote secretory gel (PSG) and parasite plug in the digestive tract of the sand fly Lutzomyia longipalpis infected with Leishmania mexicana.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2021Article
- The gene expression of Leishmania infantum chagasi inside Lutzomyia longipalpis, the main vector of visceral leishmaniasis in Brazil.Memorias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz · 2021Article
- Dataset on recombinant expression of an ancient chitinase gene from different species ofData in brief · 2020Article
- Chitosan Contribution to Therapeutic and Vaccinal Approaches for the Control of Leishmaniasis.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Review
- Trypanosoma brucei colonizes the tsetse gut via an immature peritrophic matrix in the proventriculus.Nature microbiology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Chitinases of trypanosomatid parasites have been proposed to fulfil various roles in their blood-feeding arthropod vectors but so far none have been directly tested using a molecular approach. We characterized the ability of Leishmania mexicana episomally transfected with LmexCht1 (the L. mexicana chitinase gene) to survive and grow within the permissive sand fly vector, Lutzomyia longipalpis. Compared with control plasmid transfectants, the overexpression of chitinase was found to increase the average number of parasites per sand fly and accelerate the escape of parasites from the peritrophic matrix-enclosed blood meal as revealed by earlier arrival at the stomodeal valve. Such flies also exhibited increased damage to the structure of the stomodeal valve, which may facilitate transmission by regurgitation. When exposed individually to BALB/c mice, those flies with chitinase-overexpressing parasites spent on average 2.4-2.5 times longer in contact with their host during feeding, compared with flies with control infections. Furthermore, the lesions that resulted from these single fly bite infections were both significantly larger and with higher final parasite burdens than controls. These data show that chitinase is a multifunctional virulence factor for L. mexicana which assists its survival in Lu. longipalpis. Specifically, this enzyme enables the parasites to colonize the anterior midgut of the sand fly more quickly, modify the sand fly stomodeal valve and affect its blood feeding, all of which combine to enhance transmission.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.